Blog Reflection

Now that the end of quarter is here I have went back and read my posts on my blog along with comments that I wrote and others wrote about me. It is very apparent that my writing over these eleven weeks has gotten much better. Starting out with my first couple of posts I noticed that my writing was very bland and I pretty much just stuck to the assignment answering the questions asked of me. As the quarter went on I expanded the horizon on what I wrote about and if you look at my grades, they steadily improved with each paper that I wrote. I contribute the majority of this to the class itself. I learned several new things about how to write in different styles and how to sound more credible to the audience. Rhetorical concepts such as ethos, pathos, and logos, which we learned In English 151, I didn’t start to apply to my writing until now. I really like the blog because it allows me to do exactly what I’m doing now, which is go back and reflect on what I wrote and see how I evolved over eleven weeks. If these writings would have been turned in through hard copies then the professor would have to make sure that we got them back and then I would have to try and keep them situated in a folder. This is one of my setbacks as a student in that I feel like I’m not very organized and this blog allowed me to organize myself.

When I talk about my stronger blogs I would have to say is the position argument piece that I wrote. It talked about the polar ice caps and how their melting is affecting everyone and everything around the world. The reason that I feel that this particular piece is the strongest is that it was well balanced in research and personal feelings. I actually enjoyed writing this essay and learned a ton about the subject. It sparked my curiosity to attend the lecture Dr. Thompson presented where I expanded my knowledge on the subject. My revision also made this a stronger essay than the rest of the essays I wrote. The weakest one I wrote would have to be the first one I wrote for this course which was my personal essay. This was early in the year when I feared not fulfilling the requirements of the paper. In the end, all the paper consisted of is a list of answers rather than a well thought out paper. There were not enough personal feelings or examples that paint a picture for the audience. I also feel that I did a very poor job of accepting the advice from my peers and make the corrections they offered which would have made a sufficient piece.

I feel while I writing on the blog the fact that the blog was public never really affected me a whole lot. Well let me rephrase that. While writing I never held anything back or felt embarrassed that thousands of people could read what I was writing. In the back of my head was that my class and professor would be the main audience so I wrote as if a college student would be reading my posts. I spoke truthfully and when I didn’t feel 100% on a topic I researched it and cited it to let my peers know what the truth was and where I got it from to make credible. Another important factor for me when writing on this blog was that I made sure that I left room for anyone to add or clear things up that may have been confusing. I tried to encourage my classmates and anyone that read my posts to comment on how I could make it better which is important when writing about anything. After reading the comments left I feel that my writing was cleaned up and that for the most part people really enjoyed my blog as a whole. When commenting on other writers’ posts I tried to provide the same encouragement and positive critiquing as they provided for me. I kept in mind how hard it is to read something you wrote and pick up every little imperfection. As an outsider I would try to point these mistakes out while also giving them encouragement to keep up the good work.

Overall, the positives of this blog outweigh the negatives. Once I became comfortable with the blog and realized all that I could do with it the blog actually became quite interesting. It is nice to have collection of all your thoughts on several different subjects to show others how you feel about them. The best part about it for an English class, that was ironic because of our class theme, is the amount of paper and ink you save. Especially with our struggling economy and environment, blogging allows you to post writings, grade them, and store them without the hassle of printing and exchanging the actual papers. Blogging is something that should be introduced to other courses that require a lot of research papers and I hope that over the years that this will start to become more popular.